andy pose la question :Is there an easy way for my students to find out 8 to the power of 21 to solve the grains of rice doubling investigation on a chessboard? Any suggestions welcome. Thanks very muchRobert Dawson and Claude Tardif lui répond.

Adam pose la question :I am trying to figure out how big a piece of wood I need for a variant of chess I thought up. The board essentially is a set of 6 concentric rings with an empty space in the center, each ring consisting of 24 spaces - so essentially 6 concentric 24-sided polygonal rings made up of trapezoidal spaces. I know the interior angle of the shape (15 degrees), but I can't figure out the size this thing should be.

All I know is that the innermost ring will have the smallest spaces, and that those spaces need to be able to accommodate chess pieces 3/4" wide without them overlapping onto neighboring spaces. That is to say, the short parallel side of the trapezoidal space on the innermost ring should be at least 3/4". But I have no clue how to extrapolate the full diameter of the board from that one measurement. HELP!
Adam Goss
saganth@yahoo.comStephen La Rocque lui répond.

Patty pose la question :Tiffany plays first board for her middle school chess team. Since she joined the team last year, she has won 27 of 51 tournament games. That's a winning percentage of about 53%.

If Tiffany went on a winning streak, how many games would she need to win in a row to raise her winning percentage to 60% Use variables and equations to communicate the method you've used to solve the problem.

Patrick McGarrity pose la question :In the classic puzzle where you put 8 Queens on a chess board and no queen can take any other queen, I was wondering if there was multiple solutions. Obviously there's the mirror and opposite images of the way I solved it, but I was wondering how many solutions there were, and if these solutions all followed a similar pattern? Claude Tardif lui répond.